As a coding scheme of coding images from multiple viewpoints such as three dimensional (3D) images, there is a multi-view video coding (MVC) scheme that extends an advanced video coding (AVC) (H.264/AVC) scheme, for example.
In the MVC scheme, an image to be coded is a color image having a value corresponding to light from an object as a pixel value, and each of color images from multiple viewpoints is coded with reference to the color image of the viewpoint as well as color images from other viewpoints.
That is, in the MVC scheme, among the color images from multiple viewpoints, a color image from one viewpoint serves as an image of a base view and color images from other viewpoints serve as images of dependent views.
The base view image (color image) is coded with reference to only the image of the base view, and a dependent view image (color image) is decoded with reference to the image of the dependent view as well as the images of other dependent views, as necessary.
By the way, in recent years, standards such as MPEG3DV scheme have been established as a scheme that employs a disparity information image (depth image) including, as the images from multiple viewpoints, disparity information related to a disparity of each pixel of a color image from each viewpoint as a pixel value, other than the color image of the viewpoint, and codes the color image from each viewpoint and the disparity information image of the viewpoint.
In the MPEG3DV scheme, the color image from each viewpoint and the disparity information image from each viewpoint are respectively coded in principle, similarly to the MVC scheme. As to the disparity information image, various coding methods have been proposed for the purpose of improving coding efficiency and the like, (for example, see Non-Patent Document 1).